A Chocolatier's Dream: Durian Truffles And No Wi-Fi

Sarah Tilton
, ContributorI write about Asian entrepreneurs from chocolate makers to techies.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Techies like their food. Where you find start-ups in San Francisco you'll also find bakeries selling haute muffins and coffee shops so specialized they should have curators. Among the latest additions to the artisanal food scene is Socola Chocolatier + Barista, the creation of chocolatier Wendy Lieu whose jewel-box shop offers award winning truffles, pastries and Four Barrel Coffee in a Wi-Fi free zone.

The handmade truffles (you can watch her make them in the open kitchen) come in more than a dozen flavors. Favorites among her followers include the Sriracha Flying Rooster made with dark chocolate, organic cream and Sriracha, the Southeast Asian hot sauce which adds a note of garlic and chili. Or try the Notorious H.O.G., a combination of applewood smoked bacon, dark chocolate and chipotle sea salt. The stout beer truffle has a bit of Guinness stout; Ms. Lieu says the nitrogen in the Guinness gives the ganache a velvety texture.

This week Ms.Lieu made durian truffles which sold out before we could even get to the store. "Durian is smelly. I have to make it after hours," she says. "It's a wonderful flavor. You have to get over the smell." Ms. Lieu's husband requested something more traditional so she came up with a peanut butter and strawberry jam truffle. In a nod to her heritage, Ms. Lieu is sourcing Vietnamese chocolate for a new truffle. If you like chocolate with your coffee there is the truffogato, a double shot of espresso poured over a liquid dark chocolate truffle.

Ms. Lieu says her travels often inspire her truffles. On a trip to Cuba with her sister and co-founder, Susan, the pair were so taken with the guava jam that they came home and made the Give It To Me Guava truffle which layers dark chocolate and their own guava pâte de fruit. Their love of guava also led to the invention of the guassant, a croissant filled with guava pâte de fruit. The croissants and pastries at Socola are made by none other than Philippe Delarue of Patisserie Philippe.

The storefront in the trendy South of Market neighborhood has been a dream of Ms. Lieu's since she and her sister started Socola (the Vietnamese word for chocolate) in 2001. At first the sisters sold the chocolates at farmers’ markets and from a table in front of their parents nail salon.

"My parents actually are boat people from Vietnam," says Ms. Lieu. "They escaped in 1981. They ended up in a Malaysia, I was born in a refugee camp." The family came to California in 1983 where her father worked as a newspaper deliveryman before starting a landscaping business. Her mother worked as a seamstress and later opened a nail salon.

After graduating from the University of California at Davis, Ms. Lieu took a job in consulting, but she went to pastry school at night and on weekends and never stopped working on her truffle business. Her sister, meanwhile, graduated from Harvard and is now getting her MBA at Yale. In 2012 Wendy Lieu quit her consulting job to focus on Socola. She has a clear vision for the company: "I want our store to be a chocolate destination."

She also wants it to be a neighborhood gathering place and so has kept it Wi-Fi free. “I’m not allowing Wi-Fi– I want people to have conversations.”